


start a war

by Verbyna



Series: verse, chorus, verse [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Canon Bisexual Character, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grammy Awards, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Polyamory, curse of 27, in any universe Flint wants to punch Silver at first sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-09 00:12:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10399323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: Standing in a room of his peers who hardly lifted a finger to help Thomas, James says, “All that you love can be taken from you. But when it’s taken away, you’re still there. When you feel like you have nothing left, know this: you still have your fight, and it does keep you warm at night.”He doesn’t stay for the applause.





	

**Author's Note:**

> one day i'll write happy ot3 fic where thomas survives and they live happily ever after.

“You are meant for great things,” Thomas told him once.

“Great and terrible,” Miranda added, smiling at James over Thomas’ shoulder. “Isn’t that how the story goes?”

“Not if we tell it together,” said Thomas, and watched his wife sit down in James’ lap. “Not if we tell it right.”

James wasn’t in love with Thomas yet. He was still a year off from that, all of twenty-two, new to America. But that was where it started, maybe: Thomas kissed Miranda on the forehead before he left the room, his own bedroom, so that Miranda could hold James down and welcome him into the only private part of the Hamiltons’ life they had left.

James and Miranda watched him go together. When the door clicked shut, she kissed James like she was passing something along.

That’s what he’s thinking about when they put Thomas in the ground. Out of all the bright moments they shared, that is what floats to the surface, and James forces himself not to cry until the cameras are gone.

 

+

 

They fly out to L.A. three days after the funeral and drive up to Thomas’s house. It feels like they just left, though it’s been a month since they were last here. They’d been planning the release of James’ first album and Miranda’s comeback in their collaborations; Thomas had bankrolled it, but refused to put his name anywhere near it for fear of eclipsing theirs.

It hasn’t been postponed. Miranda wouldn’t allow it.

The house is strange, James always thought. It is - it _was -_ easy to forget that Thomas was born to power, to money and privilege. He only ever brought it up in his most scathing songs, and never used it except as a way into rooms he wanted to strip of those very privileges. But the isolated house where he wrote most of his Grammy-winning songs, his beautiful barricade anthems, is all dark wood and dark paint and first editions left carelessly open on restored furniture. The walls are scrawled with the names of everyone who passed through, but that just makes it more _Thomas._

Miranda Hamilton, humanitarian and multiple Grammy winner, cries herself to sleep that night on the sofa downstairs. 

James hasn’t taken his leathers off since he heard the news of Thomas’s murder. He’s twenty-five and in love and heartbroken, and he always wore them as armor. It almost feels like there’s nothing underneath now, or just enough to hold the fabric’s shape. He passes the time reading the names on the walls; he drinks the Hamiltons’ bourbon. 

He knows that Thomas would want him to console Miranda, but they _left Thomas alone_ despite the threats, and now Thomas is gone. What could James possibly tell her? 

He tries to avoid her, but there’s nowhere to go. She sits on the porch and smokes all day, and through the window she looks like something out of a film or one of her music videos. Dark hair, black dress, a cigarette burning down in the ashtray as she picks at a guitar. The music doesn’t come through clearly; the house is holding its breath, distorting sound. 

“James,” she calls, without stopping or turning her head. And again, “James,” when he doesn’t answer. 

He hauls himself up from the bottom stair unsteadily and goes outside. He’s immediately blinded by the light; it’s a shock to hear birds chirping, the river roaring on the edge of the property. Drunk as he is, the smell of the cigarettes convinces him that Thomas is there with her. Then he blinks and reality reasserts itself: Thomas’s widow, looking up at him with a look he couldn’t describe if he tried. 

“Sit with me,” Miranda says. He does, right on the weathered deck, and she hands over the guitar. “Play,” she says. “My hands are tired.” 

James checks the tuning as she lights another smoke. Her lighter is a cheap red Bic, the kind Thomas kept around for the fireplace, and for a moment James can’t look away from her hands, her wedding ring, the lighter last used by Thomas when they were all here. He closes his eyes and digs through his pockets for a pick. 

“I don’t know what to play,” he tells her, but she shakes her head. 

___“Yes, you do.” She’s right; this scenario isn’t new, just gutted, and his fingers start playing Nick Drake’s _From the Morning_ without conscious input. It was one of the first songs Thomas told him to learn after teaching James the basics, and the first he always asked to hear when they spent their nights here by the fire._ _ _

___Never on the porch, though. James wonders, then knows, that’s why Miranda’s been out here for hours._ _ _

___“I thought--” Miranda starts. She coughs, takes another drag, and starts again, staring fixedly ahead. “I thought we’d escaped the curse. We both made it to thirty, and it was too late to die young. Nick Drake died at twenty-six, you know.” She pauses, then turns to watch James playing. “That’s why Thomas loved his music. It was proof you could leave a mark even if you didn’t live very long. There are some things not even death can take away. He believed that.”_ _ _

___Thirty-five doesn’t sound young to James, but Thomas was younger than both of them in some ways. He didn’t share their anger or their fears. His disappointment in the world came from faith in the way things should be, from a kind of self-assurance that included hope in ways James and Miranda can only experience one moment at a time._ _ _

___Could, rather. Like Thomas, that hope belongs in past tense. And James is suddenly _furious_ for their loss, and furious that he can’t lie to himself about its magnitude when he can see it reflected in Miranda._ _ _

___He realizes he’s stopped playing and Miranda is holding out a lit cigarette for him. It tastes like Thomas’s mouth before he quit._ _ _

___“There you are,” she says, a little wistfully. She pulls the guitar from him and rests it against the wall, then cards her fingers through his dirty hair. James gnashes his teeth and bows his head for it. He doesn’t know how to contain this poison after he was hollowed out so suddenly. He doesn’t know how to be here with her when she’s so resigned._ _ _

___“Do you even want me here?” he hears himself asking._ _ _

___She fists his hair and pulls his head back, baring his neck, forcing him to look at her. The pain settles something in him, or settles him a bit in himself. He holds her eyes, but doesn’t apologize for asking._ _ _

___“We are what’s left,” Miranda says in her bedroom voice. Only it’s not a bedroom voice, he realizes; it’s her possessive voice, her murder ballad voice. It makes his breath hitch, and it makes it easier to relax into her hold. She’s not expecting a love song. She’s not asking for the impossible._ _ _

___“We are what everyone will bring up when they speak of Thomas. Not his music, not those beautiful fucking songs or why he sang them. Just us, you and me, and what we had with him. He died for _that,_ not for his politics. It’s up to us to remind them of who he was.”_ _ _

___She releases him and gets up, but waits by the door until he turns to look at her. “Take off those fucking leathers and shower. He wouldn’t want to see you like this.”_ _ _

___ _

___+_ _ _

___ _

___His album is dropping in two weeks, and James has no idea how he’s supposed to go through with promotion._ _ _

___Thomas had wanted to make their relationship public, but not until James was established on his own and Thomas’s next album was recorded. He’d wanted to take the brunt of it when the time came, but now James and Miranda have interviews lined up and Thomas is _dead_ and everyone knows he and Thomas were queer. Everyone knows that James was somehow part of the Hamiltons’ marriage, and no one is going to be kind about it._ _ _

___He’s almost glad, in a sick way. He won’t have to pretend he only lost a mentor, and he’s itching for a target. All he wants to do is fight; there is nothing soft left in him, no vulnerable place anyone but Miranda could touch. His pain can’t possibly increase. But they’ll go after Miranda, too, and he owes it to Thomas to fall on any sword she doesn’t throw herself on._ _ _

___The first blow comes not from the press, but from the Hamiltons’ accountants._ _ _

___“We can’t finance the tour through our label,” Miranda tells him after a lengthy phone call. “Actually, we can’t finance anything through the label beyond printing the album.”_ _ _

___James stares at her. “I thought everything was already paid for.”_ _ _

___Miranda sits on the bed next to him and gives him a slightly pitying look, like he’s still the boy she met and took to her bed. He forces himself not to react and prove her suspicions right, much as it rankles._ _ _

___“James, Thomas’s father owns the label. Not all of it, but there was a morality clause in our prenup. He’ll drag the settlement for mine and Thomas’s shares for years to bury the _embarrassment_ and punish us.”_ _ _

___He edges closer to her, because she’s planning something and he literally can’t stay away from her when she’s like this. Where Thomas could bend without breaking, she doesn’t bend. He needs to feel that resolve in her body, to remember who she is without them, before them, despite them. To see who she’s becoming._ _ _

___“The music is ours. Thomas and I made sure of that. We can release it on schedule. The back catalog is trickier, but he doesn’t have grounds to withhold it for long.” She grips his thigh and leans closer. Her eyes are-- “I am going to sell the label out from under that bastard’s feet. The board of directors is with me, and Guthrie is foaming at the mouth to buy it. Turns out that fish can eat a whale if they’re patient enough.”_ _ _

___James inhales, exhales, swallows thickly._ _ _

___“If it’s Guthrie’s money, I want it reprinted.”_ _ _

___“What?”_ _ _

___His hands float up to her face on their own. He smiles his worst smile, but Miranda doesn’t flinch, so he says, “I want it released as James Flint. James McGraw is gone. I can’t be him anymore.” He swallows again. “So reprints, another order for merch, heads up for promo--”_ _ _

___She searches his face for a minute, then reaches across his torso to his far shoulder and uses her arm like a bar to push him back on the bed. When she climbs on top of him, the room recedes, and she’s all he can see. He feels stripped to the bone, like he always was when they started, but all it does is confirm that what she sees isn’t James McGraw. He lets himself be seen all over again._ _ _

___They can’t call the monster by the name of the man Thomas loved. It’s obscene._ _ _

___“James Flint,” Miranda whispers, tasting the words. She bends down to kiss the side of his neck, then bites the same spot. His hips jerk up into the vee of her legs. “Who is James Flint?”_ _ _

___He bares his teeth before flipping them over. He doesn’t hover, just drops his weight on top of her as he buries his face in her neck. When he speaks, it’s right into her ear, and it makes her wrap her legs around his hips and surge up._ _ _

___He says, “James Flint is the one they should be afraid of.”_ _ _

___ _

___+_ _ _

___ _

___Guthrie buys the label, and the promo for the album is as unpleasant as James had imagined it would be._ _ _

___Miranda is a solid point at his side, as unbending and unapologetic as he is. They wear black and stand shoulder to shoulder, and for every radio interview he performs a raw, vicious version of his single before they both sing one of Thomas’s favorite songs._ _ _

___He never noticed how all of Thomas’s favorite musicians died young until they put together a list of songs to choose from: Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, more recently Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith, whose names were scratched across Thomas’s walls. He thinks a lot about what Miranda said, how she thought they’d beaten the curse, and wonders whether Thomas agreed._ _ _

___He wonders whether the darkness in Thomas was a premonition of his own death, but then he remembers Thomas promising not to leave them - not to leave _James_ \- and buries the question. Whatever depths Thomas kept private, he more than made up for it with his generosity. He made room for James when he had nothing but a passport and the clothes on his back; he put a guitar in his hands, slept in a guestroom on nights when Miranda wanted James until James asked him to stay, showed James how wide the world really is._ _ _

___Thomas was kind, and brave, and committed to lending his strength to anyone who needed it. It’s not for James to question how much of that was his nature and how much of it was a race against time._ _ _

___Kids come up to James expecting the same from him, at first. But all James Flint has for them is anger. And some days, God help him, he’d rather burn the world down than try to fix it. Some days, most days, he’d rather raze it and start over._ _ _

___ _

___+_ _ _

___ _

___By the time the third album is taking shape, Miranda has retired from performing. James visits her in LA when he can, but there is so much to _do.__ _ _

___Guthrie is a fucking clown, but his daughter is no fool. All of seventeen, she gets emancipated and pools hers and Scott’s shares to starve her father’s influence in the day-to-day operations of the label, then maneuvers herself into place as the top in-house manager with Vane’s help._ _ _

___James only tries to warn Vane away from Eleanor once. He comes out of it with a black eye and a meeting with Eleanor herself at the new Guthrie mansion. He could try talking about his agenda, but Miranda taught him better, so instead of the rousing speech he usually gives to teenagers, he says, “I need a wider platform.”_ _ _

___Eleanor looks him up and down the same way he’s been looking at motorcycles this past year. Her face gives nothing away, and he thinks, _where did you learn that? Where do I go to learn that?_ _ _ _

___“Good day to you too, Flint.” She raises her eyebrows at his black eye, and he grins ruefully with only a half-second’s delay. “I see you’ve met Charles. And you weren’t particularly disparaging towards me. Walk me through your demographics.”_ _ _

___James doesn’t stop to consider what Charles does to people who aren’t as careful as Flint was, mostly because he doesn’t give a shit, and he knows precisely how far love can stretch. His own loss, poured into performances, paid for Eleanor’s coup. He just walks her through his ideas, uncomfortably aware of her scrutiny._ _ _

___She does him the courtesy of not laughing at his upper estimates. And then, when he’s winding down, she raises a hand to interrupt him._ _ _

___“Thank you. I’ll take it up with marketing, but first we need to address your lyrics.” She lets that sink in, then adds, “It’s not the ‘80s and you’re not holding any barricades. We can do better.”_ _ _

___“How--”_ _ _

___She raises her hand again and presses a button on her intercom. “Send him in.”_ _ _

___They watch each other across her father’s old desk as they wait. She’s very pretty and horribly young, and James knows he should feel protective. He digs a bit for it, but all he sees is what she’s showing him: laptop, leather jacket, narrowed eyes, a half-faded hickey under her collar that she made no effort to mask._ _ _

___The door behind James opens. He’s still watching Eleanor when the newcomer says, “Mr. Flint! You should sing to who you were with the Hamiltons. Convince James McGraw that _he_ should rise up against a sea of trouble, like the Bard put it.”_ _ _

___James turns to meet the suggestion with his best bar fight look._ _ _

___“Hey, now. We’re all friends here. I’m John Silver.”_ _ _

___“Our in-house songwriter,” Eleanor fills in._ _ _

___James relaxes his face into a scowl. “No, you’re not. I’ve never heard of you before.”_ _ _

___Silver just smiles at him. “I’m no one else, either. Let me put the right words in your mouth. Don’t you want the world to listen?”_ _ _

___ _

___+_ _ _

___ _

___The third album gets Flint his first Grammy._ _ _

___He doesn’t thank Silver in his speech. Instead, standing in a room of his peers who hardly lifted a finger to help Thomas, he says, “All that you love can be taken from you. But when it’s taken away, you’re still there. When you feel like you have nothing left, know this: you still have your fight, and it does keep you warm at night.”_ _ _

___He doesn’t stay for the applause._ _ _


End file.
